


It's Mostly About Love...And Freedom to Be Yourself

by wanderlustlover



Series: My Dark Angel [6]
Category: X-Men (comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:42:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To my mother, on the event of her accident. Because it wasn't special, or spectacular, or world changing......just like any other life altering event, that makes you realize how close death can really be.</p><p>And Casse's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Mostly About Love...And Freedom to Be Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> This goes in between Flashback/forward's 16 and 17, probably right before part three in 16, give or take a day
> 
> _Dedicated: To my mother, on the event of her accident. Because it wasn't special, or spectacular, or world changing......just like any other life altering event, that makes you realize how close death can really be._

Sitting in the crook of the tree limb she could almost hear her younger self humming something she'd forgotten a million years ago. She'd always come and sat up here when she wanted to escape to just be able to hear her thoughts and make sense of the world. She'd come here to whisper her wishes of true love, her secrets about learning to ride a motorcycle, even to leave her tears for not understanding her father.

Sitting in the crook of the tree just barely hearing the words of yesterday she watched a group of fledgling children testing their wings in a world they had no true idea what would do to them. They were training with Bo Staffs against each other in the back allotted space of yard. Some didn't have the vaguest clue how to hold one and others got it with instruction, some picked it up like they were born naturals with the weapon.

Looking off into the distance she wondered where her father was. How long had it been since she'd called him her father out loud and not by his name simply to outrage him by her audacity? He'd vanished between the time he'd told her she wasn't allowed to die and her waking up here all but screaming from the nightmares. She hated sleeping still. The nightmares always came when she slept.

That was why she made Dream promise that when she slept she rarely dreamt, as one of the seven favors he owed her. Keeping tally right, and she always did, she only had four favors left. All she had to do was fall asleep and wish herself to the place of the roses and he'd be there to ask her what her next favor was.

Her father, though, was not as easy to find. Ever. She could do it, but she wasn't sure she wanted to. Not after what she'd done. What they'd both done.

Their fight had always been long and involved. It had been her fault a million times and his fault a millions times. It didn't even matter really who's fault it was anymore, it was just their fight. Their ever constant, and always, fight, that had only subsided on one day for one birthday of hers.

But never was it like that night. At each others throats, poised for the kill. How far would they have gone if she hadn't snapped right back at that moment and brought him back from the brink, she wondered, as she unconsciously stroked her stomach. She had a habit of doing that now. Perhaps even more so now that there was nothing under her hand. No twinkling light, no little life waiting to see the sun shine.

She saved a life that night, at the expense of another. Without knowing it would cost her the unborn child she had saved her father from all the damage she had done. She had almost killed him, saved him, and sacrificed her unborn son.....and he was gone.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Gone. Just gone.

And she wondered where he was now. She'd known he'd left before she woke up, but after being told she was stable. Questions filled her mind. Especially ones like if he would ever forgive the fact her last words -had they been her last- claimed it was all his fault. Funny, no one she knew, who knew her well enough, and those were few, never would have thought her to care on someone's forgiveness.

This was her father though.

The man who, she had admitted to herself amid healing her own damage from him, she only wanted admiration, trust and love from. Things that she rarely wanted from anyone. She usually only wanted to be left alone to her games, scheme's and foibles. And now....

....she was in the last place she knew to call home to the dictionary description. She'd been here since Patric brought her back about a month ago after she parted way with the Cajun. She was here some days and weeks, and not others. She couldn't get used to the place. There was something the size of a splinter in it, that hit her like a jack hammer, and made it feel like she'd never be able to fit into them.

Or maybe it was just her reputation, the snide comments, the side ways glances, and the fact no one who hadn't been here during her growing up, wanted to even give her the time of day. Hard to be in a place your supposed to call home while you might as well be guarding your back for knives in the night.

"Are you really her daughter?"

Casse snapped out of her thoughts and looked down the tree. There was a young boy down there. Young? He was probably only four years younger than her, but she had the time skip so he was still perceived so much younger. I she remembered right, and she always did, his name was Blane. He had the power to make small objects just appear, his problem was getting where they came from to localize and be safe.

She rolled her eyes slightly and moved to look down the tree, this view reminding her of the movie with the little black haired fairy and the blonde three inch tall human.

"Are you really a mutant?"

He stood back and scratched his neck when he realized she was moving to come down. His voice sounded a tiny bit disappointed and amused at her mocking tone, and it showed how much more he really was a quiet one. "Well, yeah."

"Then I must be her daughter," Casse said, with a soft jump from the lowest meeting of large branches. She brushed the leaves off her shoulders and pulling it out of the ties of the small red shirt she wore, that was a solid front like a tank top till her sides and crises crossed in only about seven thin straps, and went about brushing her jeans off before looking up at him.

"Why?" She asked suspiciously as she looked to the boy, not so much realizing leaves were still twined inside her long raven locks giving her a dryad or mischievous child look for the moment. Most people who asked about her mother were frowned on by her. Only older people, people who had know her, and well, Patric, weren't looked down on for it. They'd known; beyond the legend.

"Well, because you don't strike me as anything like her," he said giving her a circumspect look.

She almost laughed and covered it pleasantly with two finger to her lip in the center were a smile crept out along her lips all the way. That was down right amusing, since half the world only saw her mother in her, and half the world saw her as the anti-heir of the family who was anything but family.

"What?" He asked suddenly, his voice growing a touch defensive. "Well, you don't and I'm not going to lie to you and say you do. She was, like, this huge hero. She knew what she was doing and why. That it was right, and good, and just."

"Do you memorize that out of a history book, Blane?" Casse asked, with a strange gentleness that played against her complete disgust for the fairy tale story he'd just given her mother as a light.

"I-uh- Everyone knows that," he said, shifting his weight.

"My mother," Casse said pushing off the tree and walking a few feet, her fingers together as she thought on what to say. "never wanted to be that - that description you just gave her. She only wanted to make a difference, make a better world for people like her to live in."

Even though she never got to live in it herself, specifically. Would that have been different if she'd had the vaguest idea of the powers she would possess at the age of five? Would she have been able to change anything? Was life this way on purpose? So she could always blame herself for her mothers death, even while blaming her father for the way her life turned out?

"But she was hero!"

"No. She was a freedom fighter, fighting for the worlds freedom."

Blane blinked and looked at her like she was crazy. She looked from him to the house, still listening when he asked the question, even as she met Patrics eyes in a window floors away. "And what are you?"

My fathers mirror image to my mother. Her older brother Steven Ray's pain in the ass. Her twins, Patric's angel and bane. Her younger bother, Junior's old baby sitter and bed warmer. A stain on the banner of the X-Men. A damn good villain. A damn good chaotically neutral person because she didn't care whether it was the right or wrong side that won, so long as she got her way.

"The same."

"Huh." He said, but she could hear the utter amusement and waited for. you could count these things. Three. Two. One. "And what do you fight for?"

"My own freedom," Casse said looking back at him, wondering why she'd said it. It sounded more true than anything she'd thought. She couldn't remember the last time she felt free. She gave him a slightly smile and followed that up with. "If you don't mind, I have something I need to do."

"No, of course. Class looks to be about to go back into session now anyway."

She watched him walk off and wondered where he would be in five years. She rarely would admit it but she hoped the people she saw here ended up on x-teams faster than the gutter and alley's she walked in willingly. They were places that tore away every gentleness and security you ever had. Every sense of self ever found.

They gave you a look in the mirror you could never forget or out run.

Walking inside she dropped a letter in the letter box. It was addressed to this place, but she'd learned easily, the sending mail out under certain names made it take four days to get back to here. she placed a hand on the letter box and took a deep breath, knowing what she was about to do.

The next two days would be hard and the letter had been hard enough to write. Perhaps it wouldn't achieve anything but a small clear spot in her conscience for the first time since she was fifteen. It wasn't much, but it was hers and what she had written was the whole truth for once.

She was her parents daughter, both her mother and her father. She couldn't change that, down deeop she had never wanted to. She only had to learn to live with it finally, tens years after she ran away from it. It couldn't be that bad after all she'd been through so far, could it?

~*~*~  
Contents of the Newest Letter via the Grangerz System from **"You've...Sent Mail"**Part I:

_Father,_

_I'm putting this ugly event behind me. I'm putting all of it behind me.  
I'm putting everything that's transpired between us since the Sapphire of the Night heist behind me, aside from my twenty first birthday. _

_I'll be gone by the time you get this. I can't change the past.   
I've already changed the only future I thought I had left with one choice. I don't know where I'm going now, and have no one to see me off, or to meet there. _

_I'll come back one day when I can meet your eyes, off of the battle field, without shame._

_Don't hate me._

_Casse_


End file.
